Taking on Take Two

Well, it appears that Take Two knew all along about the "hidden" sexual scenes in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. For those of you unaware of the situation, some mods began circulating some weeks back that revealed "explicit" sex scenes between the game's central character, CJ, and one of his girlfriends. When this news initially broke, Take Two said that the content was inserted into the game by hackers and is not in the original code. Today, they have backtracked, saying that the content was there, but unused. Consequently, the game has been given the consumer kiss-of-death: the "AO" (Adults Only) rating. Their failure to own up to this initially, while possibly having little impact in terms of consumer interest, is a small setback for an industry that continues to suffer under the mainstream notion that video games are child's play. Or, at least, the realm of adults with the emotional development of a child.

Take Two is correct in that the content is not part of the normal gameplay, and that only a third party modification can unlock it. So, concerned parents should be able to rest easy, unless their child has the technical capacity to find and install the mod. Of course, if it is indeed a child playing--and, in my opinion, they should not be, no matter how harmless you think games are, or how "mature" you assume your child is--responsible parents might want to consider monitoring their child while the game is on.

Where Take Two is wrong, beyond their attempt at covering their asses, is thinking this should have been part of the gameplay, period. The dating element that was added to this iteration of the GTA series works like this: you meet women (a total of six or seven, I believe) along the way and are given an option to date them. With the exception of one of the women, dating them is not a factor as far as moving the storyline along. The only "benefit" of the dating side-game is that you get bonus outfits unlocked (if you fill up the relationship status bar to 100%) and you get other bonuses, such as being able to keep all of your weapons after you die or are busted by the cops. Anyway, if you choose to start a relationship with a woman, you take them out on dates (involving either driving around, dancing, or going to dinner). After the date is over, you drop them off at home. If she had fun, you'll make plans to see each other again. If not, you'll get the blow off, though future dating is still an option. Eventually, if you string together enough fun "dates", you get invited in for "coffee". The camera then cuts to the outside of the girl's house, leaving the gamer nothing but the sounds of gettin' it on. The "hot coffee" mod actually takes you inside the bedroom.

As you can see, the completely optional dating element is lame and mostly worthless. I'm guessing it was added to appeal to sad Otakon rejects (okay, that was unnecessary, but fun to type!) and gamers who like a bit more Sims-style gameplay. Therefore, I see no reason to consider adding an explicit "visual" element to it. And I don't buy for a minute that they did not have enough time to go back and clean out this code. If they were serious about putting it into the game, they would have found out early on in the process what kind of rating they would have been hit with because of it. And that content, my friends, is a guaranteed "AO". Thus, what I think happened is that the scenes were "hidden" with the hopes of being found to generate press like this, or some Horny Net Geek (HNG) programmer decided to sneak it in for a laugh. Either way, Take Two looks bad for letting it happen and trying to cover it up. And the game industry gets (more) significant negative publicity, since this involves one of its most popular titles. While I am generally a fan of Take Two, I think they really dropped the ball on this one. Maybe they felt they didn't get enough media attention after they released Manhunt. (Of course, since graphic violence is far more acceptable in our society than graphic sex, Manhunt was never bound to be as controversial as anybody expected it to be. But that's another rant entirely.)